While Life Remains
by Charis M
Summary: Those tangible ghosts linger, and there is nothing to be done for it but to seek her out. [Canon divergence post season 2; follow-up to Small Mended Corners. Part 3 of Impossibilities.]
**While Life Remains
**

 _In response to a Tumblr prompt: "I remember the first time you showed me your/our home. You had become everything to me. Never did I dream the life you gave me. You gave me love, a home, security and most of all a family , something I knew nothing about and then you just ripped it all away. In an instant I was nothing to you. You didn't just hang me. You ripped out my heart and soul. It has taken me years to try and put myself back together and now you show up again (hope this inspires)"_

 _And the prompt did inspire – I knew pretty much from the get-go I wanted to write more in this 'verse, and specifically more from Athos perspective, and it just. Wouldn't. Work. Especially the ending. Grr. I seem to have a thing for writing reunion scenes with these two, though. So I hope my anonymous prompter enjoys this, and that it in some way fits whatever they'd hoped for, when it took so long to write. (And apologies once again to anyone whose prompts I'm still sitting on. I swear I haven't forgotten.)_

 _This story is brought to you by excessive use of italics. Picks up some years after 'Small Mended Corners', during the war._

* * *

It's not easy, to track her down. It shouldn't surprise him, but somehow he'd never really thought of it – never considered that perhaps her background could be applied as easily to remaining hidden herself as it could be to ferreting out hidden things. And the wars they're fighting, with Spain and within, don't exactly give him the luxury of time to spend on it. But he's haunted by the memory of familiar features writ small, of lost chances made flesh, and those tangible ghosts linger and make him wonder endlessly _why_ , make him wonder _what if_ , make him dream when he'd begun to think he'd forgotten how, and there is nothing to be done for it but to seek her out.

He would have expected England; he would have expected some city on the crossroads, some port, some place with chances for a woman of her particular skills. He has been through enough towns, imagined her out of the corner of his eye enough times but she's never there when he turns – not until he follows a chance-met rumour into the countryside.

The cottage is small – nothing he imagines she might have been contented with (at least, not since the days of their marriage), and yet there are small things as he studies it that show clearly that the owner cares for it. They makes him second-guess his information, when surely she would not have the time for anything of the sort, the patience for such domestic matters; he very nearly wheels Roger around and rides off, but memory and possibility compel him onward. _What if_ drums through his mind as he dismounts, beats out every step as he approaches, echoes when he raps on the doorframe. _What if, what if, what if_?

And then –

Pale eyes (hers this time, not an echo in another face) meet his as the door opens. It's an almost visceral shock, to realise that it wasn't fanciful imagining and the child (not theirs, never to be theirs) really does have her eyes, and it leaves him standing there, words drying up in his mouth and leaving him dumb.

"You," she says, and anger and exhaustion tangle together in the single syllable.

"We need to talk."

Her face hardens, grows more closed. "We needed to talk six years ago." The unspoken question follows: _why now?_ , but she just regards him with that cool, unblinking gaze. "Tell me why whatever you have to say to me matters."

"Because I have seen what you left behind in Norville."

If he had expected a reaction, he would have been doomed to disappointment; she does not so much as blink, does not flinch in the slightest as he names the village where he first began to look for her again. He might have expected an accusation or a denial but neither of those comes, only hesitation that lasts a beat too long before she steps back and opens the door more widely. "There's a picket-post out back," she says; it's all the invitation she's likely to offer.

\- x -

 _They had expected to push on to reach Le Havre tonight, but the storm is fierce enough to drive them to seek shelter. Athos is only glad they had been a mere few leagues past Norville when it struck; he does not want to imagine waiting out this deluge under the questionable shelter of hedgerow or tree. The village is small enough that they find the inn empty of guests, and it's not long before they're ensconced at a table near the hearth, cloaks hung to dry and mugs of mulled wine doing much to combat the chill._

 _The wine is mediocre but the stew that follows it is good, and despite his aggravation with the weather he's content, just for the moment, to sit and breathe a little. His companions seem of a similar mind, tucking into their meals in comfortable silence. For once they needn't worry about who might be listening or plotting – theirs are the only horses in the stable, and the only other person in the room is the innkeeper's daughter, and he doubts there are Spanish spies scarcely out of swaddling clothes._

 _Aramis doesn't seem to agree, with how he watches the girl through their meal, but he waits until the other two have gone to check on the horses before asking, in hushed tones, "Is there something you haven't told us about this inn, Athos?"_

 _"What?" He doesn't try to hide his frown. "I've never been here before in my life."_

 _The other man glances back at the girl and grimaces before focussing on him once more. "Look at her – really look at her – and tell me who she reminds you of."_

 _He does as bidden, studies the child – a small thing, dark-haired and pale-eyed, baby-round face fierce with concentration as she scrubs at one of the trestle tables – and his frown only deepens. "Just tell me what I'm looking for, Aramis."_

 _"You," comes the answer, not much more than a whisper. "She looks like you."_

 _The words chill him, because that makes no sense; he's never seen the innkeeper's wife before, and even if he had what Aramis is implying can't be possible, when he hasn't lain with a woman since –_

 _"Athos?" A hand clasps his shoulder and he remembers to breathe, sucks in a lungful of air, very nearly chokes on it. "God in heaven, Athos, you look as if you've seen a ghost."_

 _Another ragged breath, another, and he wrenches his gaze away from the girl to look at Aramis instead. His brother's eyes are dark with concern, his mouth half-open to ask a question, and Athos already knows what it will be and reaches numbly for his tankard. "She has," he rasps, and it's as if saying the words aloud means admitting this is real, "her mother's eyes."_

\- x -

The inside of the cottage is plain, almost impersonal, and yet there are things he notices in his quick scan of the room that are undeniably _her_ (things that make him realise how much of her he still knows, that he'd thought part of a woman who'd never existed but is now forced to reevaluate), however small, that make it evident this is as much home as house. It makes him ache for what they might have been once, but he knows himself and he knows enough of her, and they both know such a dream could never have lasted.

There is little hospitality in her, for all that she's invited him in – Athos suspects that action was motivated more by a desire to avoid having this discussion out in the open than by any sentiment. She stands by a table still bare, arms folded, but she says nothing and he cannot bear the ghosts crowding their silence and asks the question that's plagued him since that day in Norville. "Were you ever going to tell me?"

Her face is half in shadow, her expression – what he can see of it – as inscrutable as ever. "You knew I was with child when you chose not to show up that day."

It's not an answer, and yet there _is_ an answer in her words, unspoken and uncomfortable: he had chosen not to come, had let circumstance and companions make the choice for him, and she had (fairly, for he cannot blame her for not knowing his mind) taken that to mean he wanted no part of her life. He could make excuses for his actions, and they might even be valid, but duty and honour are words that will only call up a multitude of acts they're both still struggling to forget and will solve nothing here. (Duty and honour are all he has left. And yet –)

"Why?"

And she understands him even now; sometimes he thinks she understood (understands) him even better than he does himself. "I am done with condemning innocents for the sins of others," is all she says, but he understands her too (there is reciprocity, mirroring, that makes it strength and weakness in the same breath, and in their wilful blindness they each see the other far more clearly than they do themselves) and knows there is more to it than that, and,

" _Anne_ ,"

the single syllable of her name heavy with meaning, as much answer as question, because he knows, he _knows_ what that child means to her, and why she walked away.

"She deserves better than either of us." Flat words, uninflected, nothing more nor less than factual – nothing to betray how deeply she knows they must cut (how deeply he is certain they wound).

What (he thinks, as dreams of summer crowd his mind anew) might they have been if he'd chosen otherwise before, had gone despite duty and against honour and met her that day? What might they have been – and yet he would not be _Athos_ then, and he is comfortable in his skin, knows who he is today and has accepted it, and there is no changing what is done. _Then_ matters only in what it brings to _now_ , and now they have moved apart, drawn asunder by their choices, and if their only links are shattered hearts and a bloody past and a child who is a stranger to him, then what possible future can _now_ bring, no matter what he might wish?

"Yes." It's more harsh than he expects. Standing here is impossible, breathing in this home she has made without him, but neither can he force himself to go.

"Do you have any idea," she says, and there's a note in her voice, tight and strained, that cuts him to the quick, "how long it took me to piece myself back together after?" He doesn't answer, but her question must be rhetorical because she continues without waiting, "I'm finally whole again, Athos. I'm finally whole and if you have come here to do nothing but dredge up the past better that you leave now; I've no time to waste on such things."

He presses his lips together, bites back the angry retort that coils on his tongue; vituperation has marked so many of their encounters and has solved so little, and even if he _is_ angry (and he is, as much at himself as at her – perhaps more so), he did not come here to fight. He came for questions, for answers, for a slip of a girl some two days' ride away who is and is not his child, who may be his blood but will never be more, and _oh_ , he understands too well the aching longing that underscores her words. She may be whole again, but he can see too clearly what that wholeness has cost her – what she has had to cut away or silence to fashion that new wholeness.

And what _can_ he say, truthfully? An apology will solve nothing, no matter how much they both regret so much what has been. Apologies cannot wipe out the blood and the recriminations, cannot mend all that has shattered between them. He'd thought there might be a way, before; he knows better now. They can never go back to what they were.

"Why did you come?" she asks, into that hollow silence.

The question that drove him here still drums through his mind, echoes in his veins, but he knows now that _what if_ will bring him no answer at all – that _what if_ is a dream, and the reality is that duty is a cold mistress, and there is no going back, and they stand now on different roads; to go forward with any sort of togetherness became impossible on the day he arrived too late. _To say goodbye_ , he thinks, but it tastes wrong when he opens his mouth, because they _are_ bound, and no matter how far they rove it seems their paths will inevitably cross, and that realisation is bittersweet, because to meet does not mean to stay. (It cannot now, no matter what he may wish; his path was chosen when the war began, and until it comes to a close he cannot think of another.)

Someday, perhaps – someday they may have another chance, when summer comes again and the sun thaws them both and there is time, in those languid hazy days, to find and mend and learn anew. Someday, but they must survive this winter first, make their ways alone; how can he ask anything of her until he has learned himself? No, he did not come to here to say goodbye, but –

 _To understand_. Not what he's fighting for; the reminders of that have been tangible, ever-present; to fight for his brothers and his duty and his honour is more than enough of a reason to survive, but he knows now, on that visceral level, what drives his men beyond that – to not _just_ endure, but to look beyond the end and hope.

She's watching him still, arms folded, shoulders stiff, a challenge in her eyes – a challenge, and the ghost of something he had thought dead, forgotten, with the years, and it makes the corners of his mouth quirk up in the barest hint of a smile. The incessant thud of _what if_ has quieted; it is his blood alone that drums now in his ears, and he feels steady and sure in a way he hasn't since Norville, since the crossroads.

"To be bound," he answers slowly, feeling out the words in that quiet place inside of him where the memory of her has never been a knife, "is, it seems, not so ill a thing."

* * *

 _As always, you can find me as myalchod over at Tumblr, trying to get my writing mojo back. XD_


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